The child nodded her head.
“Well, well, ye shall have somethin’ to eat.” The old lady opened the top of the small basket which hung on her arm, a basket which it was always her custom to take to church with her for the sake of certain children and grandchildren of her own. She drew out a round cookie with a hole in the center, which she extended to the child of the wandering women—the first sweetmeat the little one had ever known in all her life.
“I’ll tell yore mammy to bring ye down somethin’ to eat,” added Granny Williams. And so she clucked to her mule.
The solitary occupant of the cave stood now in the road, looking after them wonderingly, even the beloved cookie arrested halfway between hand and mouth.
“Granny, what will become of a child like that left here in these hills?” demanded Marcia Haddon after a while. There was a half sob in her voice, though still that strange, new, warm feeling in her heart.
“Why, she’ll go to hell, that’s what’ll become of her,” said Granny promptly. “Excusin’ of that school of Davy’s up thar on the hill, an’ what it kin do fer these childern, why, they’re all goin’ plumb to hell, accordin’ to ary sort of preachin’ I ever did hear.”
“Yes,” she went on reflectively, “thar’s a heap of the onredeemed in these mountings, I reckon. Maybe the railroad’ll make all the valleys alike—I hope so. It may not come in my time. Davy says it’s a-comin’ right soon. I don’t know about them things.”
Marcia Haddon made no answer. She looked across the tree-clad slopes of these rounded hills, trying to visualize the point of view of that man, her husband, who once had felt his own right to so much of this country and its contents. Ownership of these hills, this great world that lay about her undiscovered! Did, then, the rights of sovereignty impose no duties in return?
“Granny,” said she suddenly, after they had traveled for a time in silence.
“What is it, child?” asked the old dame gently.